Outline:

Education is the basic responsibility of the state and the fundamental right of a citizen. All nation states and numerous non-governmental organisations are spending huge amounts of money on the efforts to increase literacy rate. The countries that have been successful in this race are more prosperous and developed compared to those that lag behind. The astonishing revival of the Western civilisation after a centuries-long dark period and the mesmerising development in scientific study and other fields of life truly owe much of it to the education. The downfall of Muslim dominance in the intellectual race proved to be the downfall of Muslim’s glorious era.

Education is the building block for the children of a nation to identify their potentials and to be useful citizens in future whether that is formal or informal education. The purpose of education is not earning and collection of wealth but to develop a character that makes a child human being in the real sense. Rightly-educated generations respect their elders and serve as their support in days when they no longer can earn. They help the poor and needy sections of the society and extend helping hand to the deprived ones. Obedience to the law of the state has an inevitable priority for them along with keeping a close eye on the anti-state elements. They report suspicious activities to the law enforcement agencies and educate fellow citizens about their responsibilities. They keep the environment clean and green and never become part of those activities that can affect the environment in a negative way. For them serving the nation’s interests uphold the top position and sacrifice their personal gains for the benefits of collective interests. Such citizens prove to be the stimuli for a renaissance in the future generations.

Islam has also stressed on the need of getting sufficient education. These educated people will then guide other people towards the path of Allah. Allah says in the Holy Quran,” Are those that are literate and those that are illiterate equal?” The Prophet (s.a.w) says,” Seek knowledge from the cradle of mother to grave”.  The verse of Quran and the saying of the Prophet (s.a.w) glorify the importance of attaining knowledge but it does not end here. The Holy Quran goes further by saying,” Why you preach that to others which you don’t practice yourself”? (Surah Bani Israel). The message of the Holy Quran is quite clear from this verse and that is not to get knowledge but to put it into practice through constant struggle else that knowledge is no avail. Even Holy Prophet (s.a.w) compares himself with the teacher by saying,” I have been bestowed as a teacher”. Why the Holy Prophet (s.a.w) has compared himself with a teacher? The reason is simple and that is the teacher has the same duty of formation or reformation of the character of a nation as a Prophet has but a difference is in the degree of divine decree. The Prophet receives his message from the divine one whereas the teacher acquires it through five senses by a constant struggle.

Why companions of the Prophet (s.a.w) use to practical manifestations of the knowledge that had or why was the later glorious Muslim era full of scholars with high ethical standards? The reason is the practical role models they had to follow. In the modern education system, the sole purpose of the teacher is to earn money without taking care of the moral and spiritual needs of the children. Parents too have become too much materialistic. They pay the teachers with high fees even without examining the grade and especially the moral conduct of the children. Most of these children upon seeing their role model become purely materialistic in nature with no care for human feelings or ethics. These money making machines prove to be the initiator of a coming generation with only material lust and this vicious cycle continues without any regard for spiritual and ethical needs.

The lack of providing ethical education has a tremendous negative impact on the children but who is responsible for this? The first entity which is responsible for this behavior is the parents who brought up their children in an environment where there is no use of moral standards.  As the saying goes,” The first university of a child is the cradle of power”. Thus parents and especially mother has to take responsibility to give their children an early informal education that can guide him towards ethical life.

Apart from home, the first place that a student gets accustomed with is school. School life serves as the base for the future of a child and thus the important entity which is responsible for the upbringing of a child is none other than the teacher. Teacher use to be the moral and spiritual mentor for his pupils and can guide them towards right path if he wishes to do so but even most of our teachers are materialistic in nature. They come and teach like robots without any regard for the moral needs of children. The substandard curriculum is also adding to the problem. Our education and curriculum have been divided into three main class based systems.  One system is for elite, the other one for middle class and the third one for poor people. The first one is creating minds that no longer recognize the moral values of Islam and east, the second one is producing a mixture of Islamic mind and western mind and the third one is producing another class that considers the other two as deviated and even infidels. This dilemma has hampered whatever progress our education system was going to show. The society and the state cannot be considered an exception in the matter. Both are as equally responsible as the parents, teachers and our education system.

To counter the growing threat of widespread immorality and ethical downfall in the society we have to take a step towards the formation of an egalitarian society with an education system applied to all the classes at the same time and with the same curriculum. The curriculum should be comprised of ethical and religious education with a stress on the life of the Prophet (s.a.w) himself because as Naomi Heidorn says,” Education is formation, not information”. We need to focus on the formation part of the education more than the information part. Teachers should be first trained according to the needs of the time and then be passed to a proper merit system for hiring. Teachers training programs on periodic intervals can result in improving the efficiency of teaching. Last but not the last, parents have to play the primary role of teaching their children in a way that they become the flag bearers of moral ideals.

The rapid progress has made man more of a tool in the hands of science and technology. He has become somewhat a slave to the same things that he invented. It’s time to regain the same moral standards that our forefathers had during the era of non-industrialization. This does not mean that we stop inventing new things or stop pursuing careers or stop earning money rather it means that in addition to earning for the families we should also give them the moral education that differentiates a human from animals.